The thoroughness and viciousness of the Reddit purge, and how tra and supporters behaved during it, repeaked me. Celebrating shutting down not just opponents’ speech, but even just open discourse, like in the debate sub. Celebrating shutting down truelesbians. Lurking and threatening with possible shutdown the detrans sub, if their content wasn’t up to tra standards.

The fact that a major social media platform and public discussion host enacted such a ridiculous, widespread, and unrelenting purge based on political views that a minority of the population vehemently despises, as well as non political speech that this minority deemed not correct enough for them. I hate it so much. It’s suppression of free thought and the freedom to share and exchange such thought. Some might say, “It’s a private company and they’re free to regulate speech how they like.” They are a private company and can legally do what they like—but it seems obvious that this is the form that suppression and censoring of the public spheres of ideas would necessarily take in a late capitalist society. It’s 2020, and in the US most speech directed at the “public sphere” is conducted through private companies.

To paraphrase Justice Brandeis, the remedy for speech you hate is not suppression, but more, better speech. If TRA ideology is accckkkshuallly scientifically correct and logically valid and sound then they shouldn’t be suppressing opposing ideas—they should be meeting and defeating them in public discourse. I can’t respect a movement that shies away from such debate and can’t meet such challenges, that would prefer its opponents are simply not heard.

Edit: Honestly, it is depressing as hell. I only ever participated in the GC v QT debate sub, so I can only speak about that. There was nothing at all within the debate sub that could plausibly make it a “hate sub.” Things got heated sometimes, but “heated” for that sub didn’t include slurs, and certainly nothing actually hateful. I believe misgendering was actually against the rules, and mods were pretty strict about enforcement. Nothing about it was hateful. Redditors abusing the report button, Reddit employees with an agenda, and Reddit corporate that wants the easiest way to avoid controversy—fuck all of them.